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The Ultimate Guide to Driving eCommerce Sales Using Instagram

As an eCommerce business connoisseur, you don’t have to do much searching online to see why a strong Instagram presence is essential to growing a brand, but you’re probably wondering how you can harness its power to drive more sales.

You’ve come to the right place. By the time you’re done reading this post, you’ll be well-equipped to create a marketing strategy that will allow you to sell products on Instagram.

How to Use Instagram Ecommerce Marketing to Drive sales

1. Set up your profile the right way:

First, realize that your eCommerce account should be separate from your personal Instagram account so you can focus on delivering the content your target audience wants to see. That mindset will guide you as you set up your profile and begin to plan the kind of content you should share. The two main elements:

- Profile image: If you have a company logo, consider using it as your profile image. If not, you may want to consider creating a social media logo for your brand – one that you can use across all of your social media platforms. Be smart about your profile picture decisions and make sure you use the same one across all your social media platforms.

And regardless of what you decide to use as your profile image, make sure it’s the right size. An illegible, blurry image will hurt your brand credibility and send potential customers running off to your competitors.

- Bio: Your bio shouldn’t just be a place where customers can read a sentence or two about your company. Instead, you should use that space on your profile to get your customers to take action.

Think about what you want your customers to do, and write your bio in a way that encourages them to take that action. If you want to include a link they can click to shop your feed, use the PhotoslurpShoppable Instagram Feed feature – it’s a great way to help customers quickly find what they want so they can make a purchase without having to navigate to your site and search for the product.

2. Share the right images:

When a potential customer visits your Instagram profile, they’ll typically make a decision about whether or not to follow you based on:

Your bio

Your brand

Your 9 most recent photos

We’ve already talked about how to optimize your bio, so now, let’s discuss what kinds of images will build your brand and make customers want to connect with you. Here are some best practices you should follow:

Only post high-quality images to your Instagram account: shoppers are 3x more likely to make a purchase online when they see high-quality photos.

Post in-context photos: These kinds of photos will help customers envision themselves using your product like the person in the picture.

3. Hashtag it up!

You have to pick the right hashtags to make that happen – hashtags that put you in front of your audience.

Whatever you do, keep the hashtags relevant.

It might be tempting to look up the most popular hashtags on Instagram and use those just to get engagement, but that engagement won’t matter if it’s not from your target audience.

Also, try to limit yourself to 3 to 5 hashtags per image. If you use any more than that, you’ll just look spammy and desperate, which is likely to drive customers away.

4. Share exclusive discount codes:

Doing this gives people a reason to stay engaged with your brand on Instagram, and it’s a pretty simple process. After you set up a discount code, all you have to do is create an image that advertises the code and share it with your followers.

5. Feature happy customers on your feed:

Customers who post pictures of themselves wearing or using your products are your brand advocates, and sharing their photos can help you build even more brand loyalty.

So if you aren’t already, encourage your followers to share photos of themselves using your products with you. Let them know you’ll choose some to re-post, and they’ll want to participate even more because of the exposure their photo will get when it’s featured on your account.

6. Partner with influencers:

We’ve talked about featuring customers on your feed. But have you ever thought about reaching out to an Instagram influencer so they can feature your product on their feed?

If not, now is a good time to start. Many popular eCommerce brands partner with influencers so they can grow their following, drive engagement, and sell more products.

The trick is to find an influencer whose audience is similar to yours. For example, if you sell makeup, you could reach out to a popular makeup artist and start collaborating – their following would be full of people who are interested in makeup (and therefore likely to be interested in your products!).

Author: Jorden Roper.

Read the full article written by Jorden Roper, including great examples from different brands, HERE!

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